Per-instrument Timing, Volume and Pitch Humanization/Randomization

[unfa]

I think that an arbitrary way to randomize the instrument output a bit could be a very nice function.

I propose adding a special "Humanize" panel with Volume, Timing and Pitch humanize knobs.

The idea is to process the notes before they are sent to the instruments. It'd need some read-ahead for time humanization so some notes can be played earlier.

The pitch humanization would detune every note randomly in some range - prefarably with a gaussian distribution function. This would simulate non-perfect note fretting on guitars.

The ideas could be ectended to create a "randomization" pane for instrument as there are many things that can be set for this.

What do you think?

[tresf]

Humanization is certainly something I miss from other DAWs. +1

[rubiefawn]

+1. Great for drum sequences too, makes it seem a little less robotic.

On Thu, Sep 18, 2014 at 5:33 PM, Tres Finocchiaro notifications@github.com wrote:

Humanization is certainly something I miss from other DAWs. +1

— Reply to this email directly or view it on GitHub https://github.com/LMMS/lmms/issues/1165#issuecomment-56118215.

[musikBear]

partly related to #688 :+1:

[Sti2nd]

A way to achieve this now is to connect it to a lfo controller and adjust the amount, but it is perhaps to fast changing? Making a lfo "preset" called Humanize could perhaps be a decent solution? I am thinking that it wouldn't need to show up as a lfo, but would be controlled directly from the controller it controls.

[Gps2010]

That would be awesome.

I remember a demonstration, I once saw at the company I worked at.

It was with an Atari ST and Cubase.

The guy who made the music, made a rhythm on his keyboard , and let us listen. We complained, it sounded very mechanical. He then took the mouse of the Atari and deliberately, moved one or two notes sligthly of, in timing.

It suddenly sounded like a real drummer LOL

For those that dont know the AtariST and or Cubase) The big difference with LMMS is that the computer makes the sounds, as in the Atari case the music keyboard made the sound. ( or the midi thingy) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSzKUcQBR60

[diizy]

Timing changes for notes are a difficult concept, because we can't predict the future - we work with notes in a "realtime" paradigm, no matter if the notes are pre-recorded or actually played in realtime. This means that since we can't predict future notes, we can't move any of the notes backwards in time. So any timing changes to notes would have to be forwards-only.

There's additional layer of difficulty in that we have both native notes and midi notes, and we currently deal with midi notes by throwind note on events when the native noteplayhandle is constructed. Moving the note on event away from note construction causes issues with threading (race conditions) causing weird bugs with midi-based instruments (I've tried).

Volume and pitch randomization are much easier though, they're simply adding a random value to the volume & frequency properties of the note (although with midi notes, frequency is limited to discrete keys, so pitch randomization wouldn't work on those: basically, it would only work on our native instruments). All we need for randomizing volume/pitch is pretty much just the UI for it. I suggest adding this to the FUNC tab in the instrument window, as it would seem like the natural place for it.

[musikBear]

diiz , aren this a bit overtopping the actual issue? You are thinking 'live-performance', but in fact its a file or data-write-to-file task- Eg i think note-event 'humanization' as vel as 'Swing' could be done on the mmp. (actually thought about it as i made that automation-track-gadget eg: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPaOva0ntzs Swing is typically 1-3/64 opstream 'off', surely that could be 'automated' eg Mark-notes-moves 1->3/64 upstream Humanization.. well 1..6 /192 randomly added to marked notes posistion.. Wouldent that do it? Filed-data-wise, that is?

[tresf]

'Swing' could be done on the mmp. (actually thought about it as i made that automation-track-gadget)

Please don't propose these stop-gaps as permanent features. We are talking about a DAW, not an XML parser. These quick hacks are just that -- hacks. They aren't the right way to do things, they're just a temporary solution until the feature is coded into the software. :ribbon:

-Tres

[diizy]

On 09/23/2014 02:27 PM, musikBear wrote:

diiz , aren this a bit overtopping the actual issue? You are thinking 'live-performance', but in fact its a file or data-write-to-file task- Eg i think note-event 'humanization' as vel as 'Swing' could be done on the mmp.

Yeah except that it would be a one-way destructive operation. Once applied, it couldn't be un-applied or adjusted.

[musikBear]

Yeah except that it would be a one-way destructive operation. Once applied, it couldn't be un-applied or adjusted.

True! :zap:

---

True for the randoming, that is - Swing-pattern would be simple to redo. __ A different problem is stacked notes chosen Stack-chord-table. Here there is no user access to the notes in a chord. Only the root is shown, and the other notes in the stacked-chord, is played by lmms.

[gi0e5b06]

https://github.com/gi0e5b06/lmms/commit/1e3eb1b1b85bdefe9ee30e229c05a3374420dc22

[tresf]

As part of a pruning effort, this enhancement request is archived into a dedicated "Better Workflow" checklist here #4877.

[tresf]

@musikBear claims this is in progress, marking and assigning as such.

[messmerd]

Maybe there should be an option to specify a random seed for generating the humanization. That way you can make a guarantee that your track will sound the same every time it is rendered. And you can choose seeds that sound better to you than others.

[messmerd]

And if we implement random seeds, maybe it would also be a good idea to have a control available which lets you reset the seed. This way if you have a pattern containing a riff and you like the way it sounds with the current seed, you can reset the seed every time the riff plays so that it sounds the same every time. It's probably not as important to have, but it should be easy to implement and I think it's good to allow the user more control if they want it.

[allejok96]

Some good ideas suggested by @spechtstatt in #6140. What about something like this:

You pull the knob, the notes are humanized. You release the knob, it bounces back to zero and changes are applied.

Good:

• solves note position problem
• enables manual edit of humanization
• live visual feedback

Bad:

• humanization cannot be "turned off" later

[musikBear]

i made humanization strumming and some move things, but could not get it on git from a VB Atm i am trying to get vs2022 to run on windows This is what i have: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlBtU0JYvyY

[spechtstatt]

@allejok96: I don't think that the missing "turn off" functionality is really much of an issue as long as you have the possibility to reduce the effect again and/or get back to an initial state.

Best is maybe to show (again) a picture :-)

[spechtstatt]

If we have additional functionality like

it would also be relatively easy to get to back to an initial state if the range of the knob is not enough anymore.

Of course we may need to think a little deeper which functionality we need. We could e.g. add a kind of inversion of the Right (aka note length) and Left (aka note start) of the picture above which would allow to reduce to the rightmost start and the shortest length respectively.

And if we look at panning and velocity it is anyway possible to set the same value to all selected notes.

[spechtstatt]

Regarding an additional toolbar somehow like this:

I would vote for making things more explicite because I can say from my own experience with LMMS until now (a couple of months) that I was not aware of the additional editing functionality until digging deeper during the development - also because I was not expecting it inside a menu with a wrench icon.

And a second reason: I don't know if anyone of you have ever seen this "introductory" youtube video where a guy was opening LMMS and said something like "uh and where is all the stuff?" - he was playing around with bit invader and some of the simpler synths and his final conclusions about the capabilities of LMMS were (in my mind) really, really unfair. BUT: I think he made a point regarding the lack of the presentation of capabilities. @musikBear created also an issue with opening more stuff when you start the program the first time to be more impressive.

[spechtstatt]

@musikBear: I looked at your video and I think this is a great and very important functionality.

What is your opinion on the quantization setting? Do you think it would be an improvement to remove the dependency on the quantization or do you regard this as an advantage or even a must have? I am pretty sure that I have not considered everything in my proposals :-)

[allejok96]

To be fair @spechtstatt I was using LMMS for a couple of months before I discovered the preset collection.

[spechtstatt]

@musikBear: and regarding the effect of the strumming modification of the notes in a single line which you mentioned in your video: I am not sure if you have done this and maybe this is not a problem with your quantization approach, but I think the strumming would need a kind of partitioning algorithm when selecting multiple notes. The algorithm would need to decide which notes have to be grouped together for applying the scrumming. I am thinking about a kind of X/Y "beam" starting from the lowest note up to the left and right.

Not sure if this image is a good representation - the left beam would look at note starts and the right one at note ends only:

(or so - just thought very roughly about it, so maybe my approach is flawed)

[allejok96]

The effect should not be linear in a graphic sense, but in respect to note order. E.g. each successively higher note should be shifted with the same amount compared to the previous.

[spechtstatt]

Not sure if I understand this correctly: you mean the grouping decision or the way how the shifting itself is applied?

But maybe this is anyway much easier than I thought in the first place.